- 13215 Binnacle Way [HAR]
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This morning the city announced that it’s giving protected historic landmark status to the Mecom Fountain, in the wake of this year’s partial tuscanization of the 1960s mod landmark (and subsequent crowdfunded reversal thereof). All that bright blue primer has been cocooned over, and full de-restoration was scheduled to be finished by the end of last month.
Also getting the same protective status bump today: the 1883 house at 2120 Sabine St., formerly the First Ward home of state representative August von Haxthausen, who in the late 1800s ran Houston’s German language newspaper the Texas Deutsche Zeitung. That house got its own (more permanently) colorful restoration in 2015 — below are some close-up photos of the newly-technicolor wraparound porch from a previous listing of the property on HAR:
Colorful Histories
 from Future Off-Era Restoration Attempts... "Pin It")
Johnson Development, the company behind that sugar-company-themed master-planned community in Sugar Land, announced yesterday that it has officially handed over the land for the project’s refinery-centric Imperial Market mixed-use district to the folks who will develop it. The 26 acres freshly sold are along Oyster Creek just north of the crossing of Hwy. 90 (visible on the far left of the rendering above, which faces south). That’s Kempner St. running directly alongside the proposed development and crossing the creek as well; a pair of former railroad bridges currently upstream of Kempner are shown replaced with car and pedestrian bridges respectively.
Plans for the development incorporate structures from out-of-use former facilities of the Imperial Sugar Company. The refinery’s silos (instead of becoming an art space) are marked to host a couple of fast-casual restaurants; the 1925 char house, where huge quantities of carefully burned animal bones were once used to whiten and filter cane sugar syrup, will become a boutique hotel. Both structures are more prominently visible in the southeast-facing view below — the boxy brick char house appears to the left of the single-pour-concrete silos:
Refining Sugar Land Master Plans
Today’s Sponsor of the Day post comes from Boulevard Realty: It’s Bill Baldwin’s mid-2016 Real Estate Outlook. Thanks for supporting Swamplot!
If you’ve been wondering what the future holds for Houston’s housing market, or want to get a better sense of how oil prices and home prices go (or don’t go) together, you might find this presentation on the state of the local housing market helpful. Boulevard Realty’s Bill Baldwin typically provides a private presentation to his sales force every month. For June, for the first time ever, his talk at the company’s Heights Blvd. office was opened to outside visitors. And now the whole thing is available to watch online.
Among the topics he discusses:
- The forces behind the booming market of 2013-2014
- The real relationships among oil prices, the housing market, and headlines
- The new normal of supply and demand inside the Loop
- Workforce and affordable housing and where to be an urban pioneer in 2016-2017
- Best bets for investors, and trends for the rest of us
You can view a summary of Baldwin’s talk — with links so you can skip to relevant portions of the video — on this Boulevard Realty web page. (Go ahead and fast forward to 40:54 in if you’re hungry for one of those wowzers of a Houston real estate investment story.) Or take time to watch the entire presentation. Whether you’re a local, an out-of-state investor, or a wannabe, you’ll find in it a straightforward discussion of issues that affect Houston-area home prices.
Got something to present to Swamplot readers? Become a Swamplot sponsor so you can do it right.
Sponsor of the Day
The spot formerly known as Hughes Hangar appears to be ditching the airport theme following the closure earlier this year of both the nightclub and its across-the-parking-lot companion The De Gaulle. Remodeling of the area between the 2 buildings has been underway as well — above is the ex-bar’s former back patio, now an open lawn shielded from view of Washington Ave.
The space appears to be reopening as an events venue; the new name is Hughes Manor, and the new logo (shown here) is also similar to the old:
Return Trip
- Harris County Commissioners Accept Astrodome Underground Parking Garage Plan [Click2Houston; previously on Swamplot]
- Marlowe Condo Tower Breaks Ground with Fewer than Half of Its Units Sold [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- How Oil is Dragging Houston Down, in One Chart [Houston Chronicle]
- Rents Have Jumped as Incomes Have Fallen in Houston, Finds Apartment List Study [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston’s Fifth Trader Joe’s Opening July 29 at 11683 Westheimer [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- Fast-Casual Pizza Joint Blaze Pizza To Open New Houston Location in Webster [HBJ]
- Metro Considering New Midday Park and Ride Service Between Downtown and Southwest Houston [Houston Public Media]
- Ride-Hailing Company Get Me Expands To Unlimited Number of Drivers in Galveston [Galveston County Daily News ($); previously on Swamplot]
- Why ‘Flesh-Eating’ Bacteria Scares Shouldn’t Keep You Off Texas Beaches [TribTalk; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of the Seawall: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Save all you can, minus the house.
- 7615 Emerald Meadow Ct. [HAR]
In other de-tree-ment news along Brays Bayou, a reader further upstream sends some photos of recently cross-hatched stumps now dotting the Valero-inhabited corner of Stella Link Rd. and N. Braeswood Dr. The top shot looks east past the gas station and the Church’s Chicken roosting within; the second shot looks south down Stella Link Rd. toward the former Pilgrim dry cleaners, which these days accepts clothing only as donations to the Shriners Hospital. A neighbor on NextDoor says that the 5 trees (mostly of just-over-15-inch diameter) appear to have been trimmed all the way down to the toes in mid June; at least 4 separate 311 complaints have been made on the matter since then.
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Green Gone
The commute northward along Almeda Rd. from the corner with Hermann Park Ct. is much less shady of late, reports a reader in the area who snapped these photos last week. The tipster says that some 15 trees have been cut up and shuffled around by the Marquis Lofts (the ones at the edge of the Med Center, not the ones that once hosted a James Harden rooftop photo shoot). Most of the trees appear to have been directly alongside the road, though a few of the felled were reportedly rooted on the other side of the sidewalk. (That’s the formerly bankrupt and bank-rupturing Mosaic condo highrise in the distance, north across MacGregor and Brays Bayou in the shot above.)
Below is a graphic closeup of some of the arboreal aftermath (a warning here to those uncomfortable with the sight of sap and shredded cellulose):
Stumped on Almeda
RE-PEARING THE PEARLAND BRAND 
The Pearland Convention and Visitor’s Bureau is now selling sponsorships for the 4-ft.-tall decorated fiberglass pears it plans to place around the city to generate enthusiasm from tourists and boost the organization’s branding efforts. Executive director Kim Sinistore tells Amy Bishop that the group “would like to bring pears back to Pearland in the landscaping.†The Pearland city government’s account of the area’s history, however, largely glosses over the importance of pears, instead playing up the historic importance of figs to the region (particularly after the settlement’s  near-destruction by the 1900 Galveston hurricane, and second near-destruction by the storm of 1915). A donation of $4000 gets your name and logo onto a plaque by the themed pear of your choice (on a first-come-first-serve basis), along with other perks; sponsors can also go in on a pear with a friend and split the price. [Houston Public Media, City of Pearland] Photo of Shadow Creek Ranch Nature Trail, one of 5 planned pear deployment zones: City of Pearland
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW TO CUT THE COST OF THE FREE ASTRODOME MISCONCEPTION 
“No one voted to tear [the Astrodome] down. We voted not to spend money to refurbish it. Big difference. The only way forward is a multi-option vote: Tear it down, fix it up, or keep paying to do neither. Spell out the costs of each, so voters won’t assume doing nothing is free.” [Memebag, commenting on Count Wants To Fill In the Astrodome’s Flood Levels with Parking; previously on Swamplot] Illustration: Lulu
Experimental ice cream shop Cloud 10 Creamery looks to be collecting building permits for a space at 711 Heights Blvd., one of the 1920s bungalows prepping for a second career in retail (as shown above) as part of the Heights Mercantile development. The project, which straddles 7th St. and its bike trail companion between Yale St. and Heights Blvd., hit a potential snag last year when the city didn’t approve a variance request that would have lowered the number of required new parking spaces. But the updated site plan below shows the workaround — the Golden Eagle Binder & Tab Co.’s former spots at 717 and 724 Heights, which were purchased by the developers last May, are depicted as additional parking lots:
7th at Yale
- Riverway Properties Shelves Plans for Glass House-Themed Montrose Luxury Condo Midrise Following Sales Decline [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- What It Costs To Own a Home in Houston Neighborhoods with Restaurant, Retail, and Art Access [Houston Chronicle]
- Nobu Sushi Restaurant Slated for Galleria Mall Expansion in Late 2017 [HBJ]
- The Original Ninfa’s on Navigation Looking for Location for Another Original Ninfa’s [Houston Press]
- Taste of Texas in Houston To Expand To Include Butcher Shop [HBJ]
- Ride Indoor Cycling Opens New Gym in The Woodlands’ Hughes Landing [HBJ]
- Multilevel Parking Garage Proposed for Seawall [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Construction Starts on 3 Paths To Close Gaps on White Oak Bayou Trail [Houston Public Media]
- UH Follows Through on Threat To Sue over South Texas College of Law’s Rebranding [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- New Book Explores the Art and Science of Place Attachment [Locavesting]
Photo: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
This one’s fifty-four years is up; it’s time for something new.
